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stonesong | the place between | lineage | the fox-tail queen
Title: Stonesong
Rating: G
Genre: Modern fantasy
Wordcount: 100
Remarks: 100words prompt - music.
Stumbling tourist on grey shores, he'd thought himself welcome. The singing stones were a local curiosity, well-known, spoken of easily in bars and bedrooms.
Less so the warnings: moonless nights when sea fog rolled in a western wind, and the stones sang not cheerful ditties or sweet laments, but hymns.
He tried distraction afterwards. Deprivation. Concerts pounding bass into marrow, white noise and whalesong, sense-stripped tanks raising his heartbeat to drowning thunder.
Finally desperation, and the knife. Blood pooling in his ears, he realised his mistake. Welcome indeed. Stripped of evolution's cochlear defences, he could at last hear the words.
◘◘◘
Title: The Place Between
Rating: G
Genre: Fantasy
Wordcount: 100
Remarks: 100words prompt - repress.
"It was the war in the west for the Empire, the war in the east for Sayrad. For us it was only the war. We lived on their battlefield."
His teacher has the round face and long nose of the Sayradi, the silver eyes of the Imperials. Only two fingers on her remaining hand, but her lettering on the map is impressively clean.
"Kuz, a place. Kul, to..." He thinks. "Be neither?"
"Between," she corrects. "Our nation was born to purpose." A mountain borderland, where neighbours had found stronger kinship with each other than their war-hearted monarchs. "To stand Kulkuz."
◘◘◘
Title: Lineage
Rating: G
Series: Sunless Sea
Wordcount: 100
Remarks: 100words prompt - snub. I have so much weird guilt about my adopted scion.
Day one ashore, the captain brings him bone-dice and spiced sweets, smiles tolerantly at his chatter.
Day three he is a nuisance, cast impatiently from underfoot.
"Go with them on the ship next tide," his friend urges, practising cartwheels on cobblestones. "Stow away! Haul anchor!"
Her ragged clothes would turn his wounded longing into a childish whine, so the boy turns his face away, sulks louder. "Get thrown overboard, more like. Don't know why Da bothers with them."
Don't know why they keep pretending with us.
"Feeding baitfish," the urchin says, smiling slyly, and topsy-tails quickly away from his consternation.
◘◘◘
Title: The Fox-Tail Queen
Rating: G
Genre: Fantasy
Wordcount: 100
Remarks: 100words prompt - in the dark.
They are six and faceless, the most held at one time by a queen. She shows them coldly, proudly: shadows fanned against the wall by hanging crystal lights, arrayed about her throne like a fox's tails.
The people of six provinces adore her, helpless to do otherwise. Their own rich heartlands whisper secrets in her ear, slay assassins. Slip under doors to take the agreed harvest, leaving cradles bare.
Rumour speaks of a once-seventh. Past known borders: molten rivers, acid soil, silent nomads. Hard to say what survives there does so gladly. But it leaves no shadow on the wall.
Rating: G
Genre: Modern fantasy
Wordcount: 100
Remarks: 100words prompt - music.
Stumbling tourist on grey shores, he'd thought himself welcome. The singing stones were a local curiosity, well-known, spoken of easily in bars and bedrooms.
Less so the warnings: moonless nights when sea fog rolled in a western wind, and the stones sang not cheerful ditties or sweet laments, but hymns.
He tried distraction afterwards. Deprivation. Concerts pounding bass into marrow, white noise and whalesong, sense-stripped tanks raising his heartbeat to drowning thunder.
Finally desperation, and the knife. Blood pooling in his ears, he realised his mistake. Welcome indeed. Stripped of evolution's cochlear defences, he could at last hear the words.
◘◘◘
Title: The Place Between
Rating: G
Genre: Fantasy
Wordcount: 100
Remarks: 100words prompt - repress.
"It was the war in the west for the Empire, the war in the east for Sayrad. For us it was only the war. We lived on their battlefield."
His teacher has the round face and long nose of the Sayradi, the silver eyes of the Imperials. Only two fingers on her remaining hand, but her lettering on the map is impressively clean.
"Kuz, a place. Kul, to..." He thinks. "Be neither?"
"Between," she corrects. "Our nation was born to purpose." A mountain borderland, where neighbours had found stronger kinship with each other than their war-hearted monarchs. "To stand Kulkuz."
◘◘◘
Title: Lineage
Rating: G
Series: Sunless Sea
Wordcount: 100
Remarks: 100words prompt - snub. I have so much weird guilt about my adopted scion.
Day one ashore, the captain brings him bone-dice and spiced sweets, smiles tolerantly at his chatter.
Day three he is a nuisance, cast impatiently from underfoot.
"Go with them on the ship next tide," his friend urges, practising cartwheels on cobblestones. "Stow away! Haul anchor!"
Her ragged clothes would turn his wounded longing into a childish whine, so the boy turns his face away, sulks louder. "Get thrown overboard, more like. Don't know why Da bothers with them."
Don't know why they keep pretending with us.
"Feeding baitfish," the urchin says, smiling slyly, and topsy-tails quickly away from his consternation.
◘◘◘
Title: The Fox-Tail Queen
Rating: G
Genre: Fantasy
Wordcount: 100
Remarks: 100words prompt - in the dark.
They are six and faceless, the most held at one time by a queen. She shows them coldly, proudly: shadows fanned against the wall by hanging crystal lights, arrayed about her throne like a fox's tails.
The people of six provinces adore her, helpless to do otherwise. Their own rich heartlands whisper secrets in her ear, slay assassins. Slip under doors to take the agreed harvest, leaving cradles bare.
Rumour speaks of a once-seventh. Past known borders: molten rivers, acid soil, silent nomads. Hard to say what survives there does so gladly. But it leaves no shadow on the wall.
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